CHAPTER 23: MAKING DO WITH IT

  CYPRUS ALLEY, SPECTRE NIGHTCLUB—NOVEMBER 19th, 1992 | EVENING

  ?

  “You can put the gun down,” Cameron said.

  “Not going to happen,” the woman replied, her AR-15 fixed forward.

  Cameron made an attempt to smirk, but the pain lingering in his body stopped his smile short. Hughes had done a number on him. Even if he did have some miraculous way to activate his hexling abilities, he doubted he’d get very far at all. His Reign 18 remained on the ground, out of bullets and out of reach. There was no plan A, B, or C. There was only a game—the waiting game, where he hoped that Leroy would find a way to get them out of this sooner rather than later.

  “Worth a try,” Cameron said.

  “Maybe. But it’s not worth your life,” the woman retorted.

  Arms covered in ink, broad-shouldered, a mean mug. Cameron was almost impressed. She could’ve passed for a South Ender, if not for the fact that her tattoos were all over the place. She lacked the ink of any of the gangs he knew, which led Cameron to believe she wasn’t a Brinehaven native.

  Her partner, the lanky, gray-skinned accursed in the all-black suit, returned with a small packet in his hands. He brushed past Cameron expeditiously and crouched down next to the man who wheezed himself into a state of non-responsiveness. Cameron turned, and the accursed wafted him over with a hand.

  “I need you to hold him down,” the accursed said.

  “What? No. No, he stays put, Mr. Velvet’s orders,” she retorted.

  The accursed stared at her. “Luisa, it’s Hughes we’re talking about, and his life is on the line! Did he not order for a dose of p-blood? Now’s not the time!”

  Luisa gritted her teeth. With her rifle still trained on Cameron, she nodded him along. “Go.”

  “What?” Cameron asked, almost dumbfounded.

  There it was. That feeling. It didn’t hit him as hard. It was a slower, more gradual build up, one he could see crescendoing into something worse than a shaking hand and a racing heartbeat. He couldn’t focus on Leroy as directly, or steel himself on the notion of revenge and the importance of it. Not like he had just before, when Leroy’s life was threatened.

  Cameron’s eyes trailed towards the prism of ice not far behind Luisa, where the sword-swinging woman Leroy had been exchanging blows with remained captive in a frigid prison, her skin was rapidly falling victim to the lowered temperatures. She didn’t have Cameron’s abilities to protect her, which meant she didn’t have very long at all.

  “Rhett! Get him over there!” Luisa shouted.

  “Hey,” Rhett said, circling over towards Cameron. He placed a hand on his shoulder, which Cameron, on instinct alone, slapped aside.

  “You don’t want me to do that. I’m the one who did that to him, you know,” Cameron said.

  “Which is exactly why you should be the one to help. Things went the way they did and, I—... look. You didn’t kill him when you could have, and that means something,” Rhett said.

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “Yeah? What does it mean?”

  “It means you’re only some bad. Not all bad. And in Brinehaven, that’s worth more than you realize. Now come on, give me a hand here,” Rhett insisted, making his way back over towards Hughes.

  Some bad. Not all bad. Cameron stewed on his words, and wanted to stew on them for even longer, but something compelled him forward, towards the section of the flooring where Hughes laid sprawled out. His face was broken in more places than one and his jaw fused grotesquely into his neck. Blood piled around his body and stained his attire a color even darker than black.

  The tremor in Cameron’s hand returned, but he guided it elsewhere. He held down close to the man’s arms, just as Rhett instructed, and waited for the accursed to continue whatever it was he had planned. He dug through the small packet he’d brought back with him and slipped it open. Rows of green vials aptly labeled P?-BLD were tucked into sockets, and Cameron stared at the lettering, trying not to think of the memory of his mother’s face.

  “We’ll need to triple dose him,” Rhett explained. “The side-effects of that will be immediate, and will occur in conjunction with the rapid healing. He’ll be in a lot of pain, and too much movement too early on might stop this from working completely.”

  “How do you even know all of this?” Cameron asked.

  “I was pursuing a Bachelor’s in Alchemy at the Brinehaven College of the Arts,” Rhett continued, stopping only to bite the cork off of one vial after another, and another. “More on that later. Are you ready?”

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah.”

  Rhett clasped the three vials in his gray-skinned hands and poured the green liquid down Hughe’s malformed mouth. The man’s half-lidded gaze exploded open into widened eyes and the veins along his body all thickened at once, glowing an iridescent green. Skin and bone began to crunch itself back into place, rapidly repairing itself in a manner as grotesque as it was necessary. Hughes jerked violently, arms and legs flailing in a chaotic spur of movement that Cameron could only barely contain. Rhett grabbed hold of Hughes after he was certain all of the liquid was gone, and the two of them kept him pressed to the flooring.

  Bloodcurdling screams escaped Hughes.

  His mouth and jaw snapped forward and back. The air swelled with the noise of his skin and skeletal tissue repairing itself. When it was all said and done, Hughes shook uncontrollably, fighting and thrashing against Rhett and Cameron.

  “We can let him go now,” Rhett said, releasing his hold.

  Cameron removed his hands from Hughes, and once freed, Hughes scrunched up into a fetal position, crying out in verifiable agony as his veins still pulsed with the iridescent green glow of the pasteurized demon blood. He clenched both sides of his head with his hands and only lurched up to vomit onto the floor.

  The commotion of the whole ordeal was loud enough to wake someone.

  She stood leaning up against what remained of the bar, with tussled and short reddish hair, adorned in an oversized trench coat. Below was a white tank top with wine stains on it. “Holy shit. Hughes?”

  Cameron turned. By the looks of it, Hughes didn’t even register her voice.

  Power swelled in her hands as she locked her gaze onto Cameron. Dark energy gathered around her body as a violent, wispy outline, and it felt as though a small gust of wind had bellowed out from her body. She aimed a palm in Cameron’s direction, and layered voices left her lips; the start of what he presumed to be some sort of spell or incantation or whatever-the-hell.

  Rhett stood up and waved his hands in the woman’s face. “Aria! Aria, no, no. Mr. Velvet—”

  “Fuck Marcus! This asshole almost killed Hughes!” Aria yelled.

  Rhett placed both hands onto her shoulders. “But he didn’t! He didn’t, Aria!”

  Luisa kept her gun trained on Cameron, and cleared her throat. “Mr. Velvet’s orders—”

  “—were to keep Hughes alive, give that young man a vial, and provide a vial for Leroy,” a voice called out, smooth, with a honeyed-timbre. Cameron turned and saw Marcus Velvet exiting his office with Leroy, the sound of his snakeskin Cuban heels hitting the ground as if every step was some sort of announcement.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Rhett’s posture stiffened, and he quickly handed Cameron a vial of pasteurized demon-blood, crossing over towards Leroy to offer him the same. Leroy tipped his hat at Rhett and popped the cork off, downing the green liquid in disgust.

  Aria held a hand at her hip. “And you’re letting them live because…?”

  Marcus placed a hand on Leroy’s shoulder, and Cameron raised a brow at how careless his posturing was. Leroy’s face was idle with the kind of coldness Cameron expected, with an expression that lent itself to oncoming violence that seemed otherwise undeniable, like a matter-of-fact. But Marcus took that fact and twisted it, disarmed it. Whatever he’d said to Leroy in that room pacified him to the point of inaction and then some—he wasn’t putting up with Marcus, it was more than that.

  Rhett and Luisa remained taciturn as soon as Marcus returned with Leroy, and with a wave of a hand, he dismissed the both of them. The entire time they’d been here, the doors to Spectre were unmanned. It almost seemed stupid to have them here. Anyone with a sensibility for opportunity might brave the entrance and shift through the neon lights. Rhett lingered at the broken entrance and stopped to grab hold of the tubby bouncer Cameron had punched through the door, who, even still, remained unconscious.

  There was something in his beady black eyes that Cameron couldn’t place. A kindness that shone through the gray skin and the other mutated features that should have—and did—make Rhett’s twisted appearance a source of dread. Luisa tugged him along, grabbing hold of his arm to guide him away from the VIP lounge and back down the steps to the second level.

  Cameron shifted his attention to Leroy. “You took a deal.”

  Marcus whistled. “This one’s quick, Leroy.”

  Hughes continued to wheeze and whine behind the bar, and Aria, whose concern was palpable only mere moments ago, seemed to settle into the fact that there was little she could do. She brushed past Cameron with eyes like two daggers and popped a squat next to him, rubbing his back every so often. Hughes didn’t seem to notice.

  “We’ll talk in the car, Cameron,” Leroy said. “Drink the vial.”

  “Or, we can talk now,” Cameron said in protest, slogging down the contents of the vial and throwing it onto the floor.

  “We can, but we won’t,” Leroy insisted. That one vial of pasteurized demon blood was working overtime trying to mend the multitude of cuts and lacerations awarded to him by that woman; who Leroy released with a clench and a twist of the hand.

  “What the hell are you doing, Leroy?” Cameron asked, posture stiffening as the prism of ice around the swordswoman melted. She fell onto the ground, her skin covered in splotches of purple and black. “That bi—.... that lady damn near killed you. What’s stopping her from picking up where she left off?”

  “That would be me,” Marcus chimed. “And that lady is Rachel Chen. You’d do well to remember the name.”

  Aria turned towards him. “You let Rhett leave without giving her some p-blood, Marcus. She’s going to freeze her tits off and wake up pissed.”

  “She has some in her pouch, no?” Marcus asked.

  “Fuck if I know,” Aria said.

  Marcus took off his rectangular, rimless sunglasses and wiped them on his velvet dress shirt. “Well, find out.”

  Leroy paced over to Cameron and nodded. “Come on.”

  Cameron retrieved his Reign 18 from the ground next to where Rachel laid, still unconscious, and followed suit after the arbiter as he exited the VIP lounge. Marcus waved them both off with a two-fingered salute, soft smile plaguing his features. Cameron didn’t want to look at that man’s face any longer than he had to.

  ?

  “You did what?” Cameron said, scoffing.

  Leroy’s admission was like music to his ears.

  A straight-and-narrow arbiter roped into not one, but two schemes he supposedly had no way of getting out of. They sat inside his black Cadillac SUV, and Leroy had yet to shift the car out of park and into drive. The radio hadn’t even been turned on yet. Instead, Leroy sat with his arms resting between his legs.

  “Look. If there’s any lesson in this, Kessler, it’s that you—”

  “Plan more,” Cameron said. “Maybe next time, if there is a next time, we walk through the doors with, I don’t know, a few vials of that nasty stuff and.. and more bullets. More firepower. And why didn’t you shoot the sink, or shoot the walls for the piping, or—”

  “Yeah. You’re right,” Leroy admitted.

  Cameron was dumbfounded by his words. “I’m—”

  “Yup. You’re right. We should’ve gone to an alchemist and gotten some pasteurized demon blood, I should’ve taken three more waterskins, or fired the first shot to create a water leak. Some of that is on me. But you decided to punch through the fucking door, knock that one guy out, and left me with little else to do but to clean up your mess.”

  Cameron set his jaw. “You told me to do that, damn it!”

  “Shit. Yeah, I guess I did," Leroy said, his voice more tired than anything else. He ran a hand over his face.

  "And now you owe him two favors, which, apparently, means you’re bound by whatever-the-fuck to do them. ‘Cause you have no choice, right?” Cameron asked, voice lined with indignation.

  Leroy punched the steering wheel of his car.

  The horn honked, and he opened his mouth to follow up with what Cameron imagined to be a shout louder than whatever noise the car could produce. But he stopped himself, exhaled, and pointed a finger at Cameron, and then back to himself. “You messed up. I messed up. That’s the lesson. That’s what I was getting at.”

  Cameron leaned back in his seat. “Why are you afraid of him?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Leroy clarified. He shifted the car into drive, and began steering them through the crowded streets of Cyprus Alley. “I just know who he is. What he’s capable of. When Marcus Velvet decides you owe him a favor, choice is a word that loses its meaning. You either do the job or he finds a way to ruin you. Arbiter’s license or not. He’s built a currency on information by way of these favors that he forces on people. There are few things he doesn’t know about, and even fewer things he can’t find out about.”

  “What about the license?” Cameron said, reaching for the car radio.

  Leroy smacked his hand away. “You’re not listening. License or not, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re just giving up,” Cameron said.

  Leroy turned a knob on his car’s dashboard, and the familiar jingle of 107.1, the Smitten Mistress, plagued his ears before the commercial break cut into Soundgarden’s ‘No Wrong No Right’. Cameron allowed himself a half-smile without noticing it, and his face only stiffened when Leroy also caught wind of it. Leroy was about to turn the knob to change the station, but stopped, and let his hand return to the steering wheel.

  “I’m making do with the hand I’ve been dealt, Kessler,” Leroy retorted.

  “That’s rich,” Cameron said, shaking his head.

  “Look. Marcus is going to give us the name of the manufacturer behind ether, which’ll steer us in the right direction to fulfill what remains of our arbitration contract,” Leroy explained.

  “We could’ve found out on our own,” Cameron said.

  Leroy nodded his head from side to side, almost in agreement. “Maybe. But it would’ve taken a hell’ve a lot more time, and Donovan pointed us to Spectre for a reason.”

  “Yeah. That reason being to send us to our deaths. And you knew that, too. Kept harping on about the fucking real security and let some lady kick your ass,” Cameron said.

  Leroy raised a defensive finger and pointed it at Cameron. “For the record, I’ve beaten her before. Twice. But I’m getting old, she’s getting better, and I had to babysit you the entire damn time.”

  “Babysit? I had it handled.”

  “No, you didn’t. Hughes almost killed you. Aria almost killed you. If I hadn’t knocked her out with that ball of ice, she would’ve made quick work of you,” Leroy said, suppressing a laugh.

  “But she didn’t. And I kicked Hughes's ass.”

  “Kicked a mundy’s ass,” Leroy clarified. “But he’s a mean one, so I’ll give you that.”

  “The favor, Leroy. What does he want us to do?”

  “Second to being the greasiest informant I know, Marcus is also the de-facto kingpin of Cyprus Alley. His turf is being threatened. Everything north of Huang’s place—”

  “The laundromat?” Cameron asked.

  “Yeah. The laundromat. Anyways, everything north of that belongs to him. As far as I am aware, he doesn’t run rackets or collect fees, but he’s made everyone in those shops into his eyes and ears. That’s how word spread to Spectre so quickly, and why those two bouncers ran up after us not long after we entered the club. Anyways, there’s a guy. Goes by Gideon Draves. He’s expanding, and he’s expanding quickly.”

  Cameron raised a brow. “So he, what, wants us to take care of it? Kill em’?”

  “Something like that. Yeah.”

  “So?” Cameron asked.

  “So what?”

  Cameron grimaced. “So where are we going, to find out more about this Gideon guy?”

  “Back to Huang’s. He might’ve seen something.”

  A dry laugh escaped Cameron. “Don’t think he’ll be happy to see us given how we left the place.”

  Leroy smirked. “No. He won’t.”

  Cameron leaned his elbow against the inside of the car and rested a closed fist on his cheek. His injuries were still persistent enough to make him ache, but the pasteurized demon blood was working its magic, slowly but surely mending the wounds he’d received from Hughes. The ones on his chest were mostly closed up, but the ones on his face—where the throwing knives had cut him—were taking longer.

  Cameron lurched forward and pulled down the sun visor, glancing at the marks in the small mirror.

  “You think these’ll scar?” Cameron asked.

  Leroy didn’t look. “Probably.”

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  RACHEL CHEN

  ARIA REMEAU

  HUGHES

  MARCUS VELVET

  RHETT

  LUISA

  Enjoying BRINEHAVEN? If so, please a review or a rating, it helps this story gain much needed visibility!